Can’t Say No

home a pailful of blackberries; wildflowers in every room; going to sleep with the smell of that white, delicate blossom that grew everywhere; a bear one night-how Gram had laughed at his antics, allaying the fears of the little girl Bree had been. Like an ocean tide, there was a rhythm to every minute she had spent in that cabin, the ebb and flow of silence and contentment, the soothing murmur of love she had so taken for granted as a child.

There was no other place she could possibly have gone.

It was the perfect place…

A car door slammed behind her, jolting her from the sleepy memories. Gnawing determinedly at the inside of her lip, she snatched up her purse, unlocked the door and stepped out of the car, her heels sinking into the weedy, pungent earth.

“Who on earth would have guessed you were such a country girl?” Hart’s eyes interestedly traveled the length of her, as if he hadn’t inspected her a dozen times already. “The mystery deepens, doesn’t it, Bree? I’d say you were a man after my own heart, but one look at you and a fool would know how inappropriate that statement would be.” His head whipped around as he jammed his hands in his pockets. “Looks like the place has been closed up for a few years.”

Those blue eyes suddenly seared hers, and she could have sworn she glimpsed an unbelievable sensitivity, even protectiveness, in them.

“So what exactly are we going to do about you, honey?” Hart murmured.

Bree made several adequate sign-language motions, indicating he could drop himself and his car into the nearest ravine.

He ignored her energetic hand signals. “I’ve always been happy with the place I rent, but you’ve really cornered a special little valley here. Any cottages for rent close by?”

She shook her head vigorously from side to side.

“I saw quite a few signs on the road-”

Violently, her head whipped back and forth again.

“Nobody’s lived in that cabin for ages, I’ll bet,” Hart remarked conversationally.

She nodded yes, someone had. Another lie.

“Fascinating, how you can fib without even opening your mouth.” Hart shook his head. “I was positive there’d be someone waiting here for you-and there’s no one,” he said unbelievingly. “You just decided to take off for here, looking like a model for an urban magazine, playing some game about not talking, coping as well as a lost toddler in a circus…I don’t know why I’m asking this, but do you at least have food in the place?”

She nodded.

“So you don’t even have a box of crackers. Wonderful,” he said flatly.

All of this just had to stop. Options flounced through her brain, most of them far too good for him. Nailed up by his thumbs. Boiling in oil. Tickled to death by African ants.

A very tiny corner of her brain acknowledged a wayward and totally incomprehensible attraction to him. Or maybe it was just that he intrigued her. Most men she knew backed off at a frown. Hart probably wouldn’t back off for a bulldozer.

The vibrations warned her that he was a dangerous man, but he strode forward with an innocuous smile, hooking an arm around her shoulder before she could blink. When she failed to move forward, his arm swept down and his palm lightly tapped her fanny. She definitely stepped forward then. The sexual voltage was undeniable, and as wanted as a toothache.

“If you’re going to keep up this silent act, I don’t see you coping with a grocery store. Let’s get you inside and make out a food list, and then you can crash. You lasted pretty well during the drive, I’ll give you that. I was worried about you at the airport, but the spark is definitely back in your eyes.” He paused at the door, then pushed it open.

Gram had never kept the cabin locked up. Why bother? This wasn’t robber territory. There was nothing to steal.

There was also very little protection against a man who had suddenly developed an ominous scowl.

Chapter Three

Hart glared first inside the cabin, and then back at her. One hand rested loosely on his hip; the other pushed a shock of hair from his forehead as if he just couldn’t take much more. His voice erupted in a throaty growl. “You’re actually planning on living in this place? In the shape it’s in? I really don’t believe this.”

That was it. Something clicked in Bree. She’d put up with his insensitivity over her nightmare; she’d taken his insulting comments about her cuddling sleep habits; she’d tolerated his yawning over the speeding ticket that was entirely his fault. But there was no way she was going to sit still and hear that man malign Gram’s cabin. Slamming her purse on a dusty wood table, Bree unsnapped the top of her ballpoint pen and bent over to scribble furiously on a notepad.

Hart was leaving, whether he knew it or not. And if he ventured one more amused comment about her inability to talk, he would leave with the iron frying pan, preferably connected to his head.

“I love it,” a husky baritone announced.

Her writing hand wavered. Scowling, she glanced up. Hart had taken his jacket off and was holding it with two fingers over one shoulder. His other hand was in his pocket, absently jangling change. The white shirt clung to his chest and wide shoulders, and the suit pants seemed to have been purposely tailored to show off his flat rear end and muscular legs. Everything about him shouted sexual animal.

Rationally, she said to herself, So what? Irrationally, there was a very stupid pulse in her throat that went ping when Hart’s head suddenly whipped around and his lazy dark eyes settled in on hers.

“Everything in this place is a hundred years old or more, isn’t it?” he asked.

She nodded warily.

“It’s like going back in time. You’re a history buff?”

She nodded again. Hart wandered, one hand slipping from his pocket occasionally to finger an object in the room. “Fascinating.”

Gram had lived in the cabin until two years ago, when Bree’s parents had whisked her off to a South Bend apartment where she was close to medical facilities-and their watchful eyes. Her home, though, had always been here.

The cabin consisted of the main room, a loft and a lean-to in back. A trapper had built it some 150 years before, and without sophisticated tools had hand-chinked and notched the logs to make a snug fit. Gram had lathered whitewash on the inside walls-Bree had helped make that whitewash, stirring the hot lye mixture in a kettle outside for two days in a row.

In one corner stood a functional spinning wheel and carder; beyond it was an old oak chest with white porcelain pitcher and water basin. Behind Bree was the cooking corner-the scarred converted dry sink, the ancient wood stove that still cooked the most delicious stew this side of the Appalachians, the butter churn and vinegar barrel used to preserve eggs in the winter. A fat iron kettle still rested on the brick hearth, so heavy a woman could barely lift it, and Bree could well remember the hours when wax had melted in that kettle to make candles, even though the place was wired for electricity.

Gram used to say that people had lost the essence of life. That living wasn’t weekends, or punching in and out at nine and five and playing the politics of promotion. That people had forgotten about the natural order of things, the laughter that no one had to pay for, the peace that you couldn’t buy.

Certain things in the cabin were purely decorative; others were-or had once been-functional: the cradle that hung from the whitewashed rafters; butter molds shaped like pineapples; the hooked rug in blue and red and cream. Dried baby’s breath and thyme still swayed from the ceiling…

Covered in cobwebs. The whole place was wreathed in a half-inch layer of them. The early afternoon sunlight filtered through thick dust motes, nestled in spider webs, and sent mottled streams of yellow everywhere. Bree suddenly closed her eyes, aware of just how much work it was going to take to make the place livable again.